Based in Melbourne’s inner north, Studio Ting is synonymous with hand-crafted, colourful, high-quality art pieces. The Preston studio is the genius of Mikey Ting and Carissa Karamarko, and distils diverse artistry into fun yet functional furniture and decorative art pieces for the home. The couple work tirelessly to produce art in small runs that are exclusive, handmade, and like nothing you’ve ever seen.  

Partners in life and work, Mikey and Carissa are distinct artists in their own right but together have built something truly spectacular that is strengthened by their various artistic qualities. At the heart of both of their art is a shared passion for design, for process, and for making beautiful things. A shared perspective on life and art and the same desire for a big, bold, and exciting life drives their creative work at Studio Ting. 

Mikey is a custom furniture designer and maker, and since 2017, has been creating magic by resurrecting old art which he transforms into relevance with the use of bold colour and edgy typography. Carissa is predominantly an award-winning oil painter, using the still life genre to explore colour and objecthood through an intuitive lens. She is an eternal daydreamer, and her design work coalesces this love of objects with a playful curiosity for materials. The talented duo’s diversified characteristics dovetail together beautifully, and is the key to Studio Ting’s success. 

Colour is a predominant feature of the work produced by the creative studio. It is inherent to the vision of the brand, and both artists have an important relationship with colour in their personal art so it was a natural extension to the design aesthetic of Studio Ting. While a key element of the brand, the use of colour is intentional – its use is unexpected, interesting, but always undeniably chic. 

Studio Ting’s design process begins with an idea of what the team want to make – a hand mirror or a table, for instance – and they start considering its form and shape. Then, small-scale prototypes are produced using a laser cutter which allows them to test the form and materiality through an iterative design process. Once the team has reached a point where only minor changes are needed, if any, they manufacture a full-scale prototype. Meanwhile, they conceptualise the design to extract themes and a colour palette. At times, they’ll fall in love with a material so the process works backwards as they consider how a new material will be incorporated into a piece. 

When they’ve attained a fully realised prototype, materials are ordered from local suppliers and Mikey begins manufacturing in the studio. Manufacturing locally is something that is woven into the fabric of the Studio Ting brand. It allows the team to stay close to each and every design concept they conjure up, and anything that falls outside their collective skill sets is outsourced locally to people who have the same sense of reverence for craftsmanship and quality that Mikey and Carissa have. 

Studio Ting recently created a plump, pill-shaped lilac mirror for the Nood Co launch, uniting two conceptual strands into a beautifully resolved mirror design. The results are dreamy. Think of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus as a reference image, to create a mirror that’s been encased in two-tiered outer shells made from aluminium and finished in a lilac powder coat. What makes the exquisite design piece even more remarkable is the dual finishes which symbolise the varying outer and inner textures of a scallop shell – the outermost shell features their signature textured style while the inner is a sumptuous satin finish. The delicate florals of the Venus imagery are translated perfectly into Studio Ting’s graphic style, where they have been hand-drawn in enamel paint. It’s this kind of joy and vibrancy they bring to peoples’ spaces that truly makes Studio Ting shine.